Undoing the garden
A lazy gardener’s manifesto
My mother’s garden is returning to wilderness (Melrose, July 2023)
Return to the wild - a tale of ungardening
Recently I visited my mother’s garden near Melrose in the Scottish Borders. Once a skilled and knowledgeable gardener, her sight is failing and she is no longer mobile enough to work outside.
The garden backed onto a field of complaining sheep and beyond them stretched the bracken covered Pentlands
When my father took early retirement my parents moved to a bungalow at the foot of the Pentland Hills with an acre of mature garden, borders yes, but also a pond, a small woodland and a burn. Mum remarked this weekend how noisy it used to be there. The garden backed onto a field of complaining sheep and beyond them stretched the bracken covered Pentlands so the local birds, including swallows, a heron, and a banditry of tits had many habitats to forage in . The pond would pulse with tadpoles in spring, followed a few weeks later by an evening cacophony of frogs only silenced by the arrival of the heron! Later in the year dragonflies would hover low over the water in the afternoons until the bats took over the evening shift.
Doing the garden was a thankless task - although Mum was grateful the garden was not
When my father died my mother moved to a village and into a sensible house with a much smaller, terraced garden. The previous owner had been a stickler for labelling and lollipop topiary and had a colourful line in hanging baskets. My mum put in raised beds for vegetable, and introduced a few of her favourite shrubs, but then she fell ill and never ‘finished’ it.
‘Doing the garden,’ was something both my sister and I would take on during our irregular visits. This was a thankless task because although Mum was grateful, the garden was not. Recalcitrant borage, rampant climbing roses and nettles moved back in as soon as they heard our taxi doors slam.
This weekend I go back, and the garden vibrates with life
This weekend I go back, and the garden vibrates with life Although the borage is over now, there are plenty of foxgloves, blue geraniums and a statuesque yellow verbascum that’s turned up uninvited to keep the bees employed. The nettle patch is studded with butterflies, and as I walk past the spidery greenhouse I disturb a chaffinch shopping for nest material among last year’s shrivelled tomato stems. Bullfinches strut across the patio pavers, deadheading self-seeded chive plants and my spaniel plunges into the undergrowth on the scent of the field-mouse that’s moved into one of the cracks in the border wall.
By next year, it will be a riot of bramble and those few plants Mum did choose will be dwarfed by the ones she didn’t
I know that this is a temporary state. By next year, if no-one intervenes the place will be a riot of bramble and those few plants Mum did choose will be dwarfed by ones she didn’t. But looking at it today in all its busy glory made me think that as gardeners we too often miss the point.
Plants that would never meet in Nature are forced to stand side by side in show gardens like awkward guests at a wedding
This year’s Chelsea Flower Show, celebrated the wild garden, begrudgingly acknowledging at last the part that Nature plays in the riot and rhythm of our outdoor spaces. We hear stories about flowers coaxed with hairdryers into flowering for Chelsea week, following a cold spring, and plants that would never meet in Nature are forced to stand side by side in show gardens like awkward guests at a wedding. This feeds a false narrative of control, and a focus on the flower at the expense of the plant which does nothing to heal our relationship with the natural world. Maybe a little bit less gardening is what we all need.
